Pochomil and Purisima!

Last weekend Ivan and I went to Pochomil beach with Sabine and Matt. It was a wonderful and relaxing day! I made some fruit salad with fresh cantaloupe, watermelon and pineapple. Sabine and Matt brought some snacking treats from Trader Joes (sent by Sabine's mom) and of course we had lots of beer, limes and salt!

We were able to drive the car right up to our spot on the beach. There was a little hit with table and chairs and a few hammocks to lounge in. We spent the day snacking, drinking and chatting. The water was lovely, and we found a bunch of real sand dollars (I have never seen them alive before!) I will need to look up some information on them, because we have been to this beach before and never seen them, but this time they were everywhere, I wonder why.

Sabine and I took a nice walk down the beach and looked at all the pretty houses and discussed how we both like Nicaragua a lot more whenever we leave Managua. We got back in time for sunset and then it was time to hit the road, as it gets dark very quickly here and the road back is not the best to drive on at night (or any time) due to its poor conditions. Matt was great at avoiding the pot holes!

As we got closer to Managua we had a glimpse at the Purisima celebration. This is a very Nicaraguan holiday where they celebrate the emaculate conception of Mary. We had been celebrating it at school as well. Basically people make an alter to Mary outside their house with lights and flowers and a statue of Mary. Then people walk to these houses and stand outside and sing songs for Mary. After they have sung a couple of songs the people come out and give them treats like sweet lemons, traditional Nicaraguan candies and corn drinks. It is a little like trick o treating only with a different meaning. People also set off fire crackers at midnight and noon for a couple of days. It was kinda cool to hear the sounds of hundreds of fire crackers going off all at once for a few minutes, but it got old after awhile since people here are crazy for the Purisima, some could not wait until midnight or noon to set off their noise maker.

At school we had a Purisima assembly where they gave the students candy and whistles! The entire school was in the assembly hall and every child was blowing their whistle, it was the loudest, most horrible sound ever! When we got back to the classroom I closed all the windows and doors and did not allow any whistle-blowing in my classroom while they got their backpacks and left.

The Sandinistas continued their occupation of all the traffic circles and handed out rice, beans and oil to people lined up there. I thought it was nice at first but Ivan was very upset by it. He said they are ruining the very Nicaraguan tradition of Purisima. They are not handing out traditional treats, instead they are trying to buy the votes of these poor people by giving them a bag of food. the tax payers are the ones paying for all that food that is being passed out and it is not really helping the people by giving a hand out. We were watching people going through the lines on TV and people would show up with all their kids and they would give every person in line a bag of rice, beans and oil. And there didnt seem to be a system of making sure people didnt go through several times.

Anyway, we all enjoyed the extra day off of work whether we were celebrating Mary or not :)

My dog ate my homework!

Only at my school I hear, "My maid forgot to put my homework in my backpack!"

One of my students (the one with the family that practically owns Nica) tried to pay another student to clean his cubby. When I told him the world doesn't work like that and he has to clean his own cubby, he looked at me confused and said "Yes it does! When you don't want to do something, you pay someone else to do it for you, its business" I said well its not business in my classroom and here you need to do things for yourself.

Aww, only a few more days until Christmas break, so I better start correcting my exams!

Passion Fruit and Famous People

Today Ivan's mom stopped by to bring us some curtains to see if we liked any of them. We ended up running some errands with her. We went to a fruit stand and I got some passion fruit! It was much different then I thought it would be, on the outside it looked super ripe, almost rotten. But the guy cut it open and let me taste some. It has all these little seeds covered in slimy, sweet stuff. Ivan's mom told me how to make juice with it, so I will have to let you know how it turns out. Its weird though, I thought you could eat it, I guess it is too delicious that if you could just eat it like an apple then that is all anyone would ever eat. I find many tropical fruits are very difficult to get into an edible form.

While we were on the way to another market to find stuffing for Thanksgiving, we came across a small march. It was a march organized by a church group who were against the recent elections. It was nice to see a peaceful march. I guess there were no Sandinistas there throwing rocks because it was small and organized by the church. Plus the Sandinistas already had their huge celebration on Friday, with fireworks and even an appearance by Ortega and his witchy wife!

Anyway, Eduardo Montealegre (the guy who lost for mayor) was in the march, and Ivan and his mom waved to him in support, and he waved back. There was also a political TV show host (who the Sandinistas forced off the air) marching. So it was kinda cool to see that march and those people in person. Then in the market we saw another TV show host, the show he hosts is called Esta Noche (Tonight) and it is kind of a Chronicle-like show, lately it has been mostly politics, but it also has had nice stories that aren't big news, but are nice public interest stories.

Lincoln "bake sales"

Every now and then at school there are bake sales to raise money for charities. I was excited to see what kind of tropical Nicaraguan home-made sweets would be for sale. To my disappointment what I found at the "bake sale" was individual packs of crackers, cookies and candies, along with some hi-C! It is amazing to me with all the stay-at-home moms and maids that these children have that no one brought anything that is actually baked. I wonder why they even continue to call it a bake sale, they should call it a vending machine sale, or something like that.

Nicaragua's Elections

The municipal elections happened here 2 weekends ago. Since then things have been crazy. Of course everyone knew the Sandinistas would try to steal the elections. They did not let observers in to oversee the process, many polling places closed early, results from certain polls have never been reported, and those that have been reported are suspected to be altered in some way. The Sandinistas ending up winning in the majority of the municipalities including Managua.

The person that "won" in Managua is Alexis Arguello, an ex champion boxer, ex drug addict, who was robbed of all his riches when the Sandinistas took power in the 80s. Now, for some reason, he is with the Sandinista party, maybe in the hopes of getting back his lost fortune from the Sandinistas.

Eduardo Montealgre, is the Liberal candidate, who declared himself the winner as well, claiming he had the raw numbers from the voting polls and that he was the real winner. He is a successful businessman both here and in the States> He, I am sure has his own faults, as all politicians seems to, but was the clear choice for most people I know here.

Once he declared himself the winner, violence began to break out on the streets between the two opposing parties. Despite this violence, we had school the next day. My principal seemed confused as to why I would think it was dangerous coming into school, saying that the violence was only in the barrios, which is not true, the unrest is focused around the main Electoral building which is on the main road, not too far from where I live and where many people need to drive through the city.

Every day last week, the school closed at 4, since most of the incidents in the street seem to happen around rush hour. Luckily, I have been able to get a ride with Sabine, and not worry about taking a taxi. The rabble rouser gather in the rotundas (traffic circles that are all over the city) and wave flags, set off mortar explosions, throw rocks at people and passing cars, rip down political propaganda and burn things in the street.

The votes are being recounted, but not without any observers, so they are thought to be fraudulent. This weekend was rather calm and we were able to leave the house and drive around which was nice. But today (Tuesday) there was a March for Democracy, organizer by Montealegre. School was canceled and the streets were flooded with Sandinistas again trying to impede the march. The streets were full of people in masks throwing rocks, shooting mortar, wrecking cars, etc. The Liberals gathers for the march, but it was canceled due to all the violence.

Although it is unbelievable to see what is happening on the streets that I travel everyday, it is even more unbelievable to know that tomorrow morning they will be clear and "safe" and people will be traveling to work as normal.

And just so everyone knows, the area that I live in is very safe and secure and I feel safe as long as I am home!

Check out this video I recorded of the news.

The Election

Ivan and I watched the numbers come in last night at Sabine and Matt's place, with Cezanne too. It was nice to watch it with other Americanitos and Ivan was excited about it too! They also made squash soup, which was delicious and like a touch of autumn in the tropics :)

It was so amazing to see people celebrating last night. I am happy to see so many young people excited about politics again and making history. I felt like a new American going to work today, and received some congratulations on the new president, although many of my students were disappointed McCain didnt win.

Elections in Nicaragua will be on Sunday and there is a big Mayoral election going on in Managua. Work is canceled nationally on Friday and Monday because the streets will be dangerous, but since Lincoln is private they are holding classes on Friday, the only school in Managua doing so, because they say the school is in a safe area...but many need to commute across the city to get there, so we will see what happens.

I am excited for the long weekend, but sad we will not be able to do anything. It is recommended to just stay at home. Cezanne, Sabine and I are planning a movie marathon. Ivan will probably be gone all day Sunday waiting to vote. But he is unsure if he will be allowed. He applied to update his cedula (the identification card that you need to do anything here) but many of the offices have been closed down the past few weeks, specifically to prevent people from getting their updated cards so they wont be able to vote. Gotta love those Sandinistas, trying to steal another election!

Oh and I saw a rare sight today--- a pretty Bentley driving in Managua, for a moment I thought I was back in Boston, walking down Newbury Street (not really though)!

Halloween

Ivan and I were invited to a Halloween party. Ivan doesn't like how Halloween is celebrated here, because it is not a Nicaraguan holiday and people don't know what it is about, they just like to get dressed up. So he has never dressed up for Halloween before. He agreed to go since gringos were hosting the party.

The hosts were Sabine and Matt, a newly wed couple who are about my age. Sabine is a high school science teacher at Lincoln and we share grievances about teaching there. Matt works for an NGO out of their apartment, which is not too far away from us!

I had the terrific idea that Ivan and I should be Lucy and Ricky, from I Love Lucy, but Ivan had never seen it! We watched some clips on youtube and Ivan was cracking up. Unfortunately we could not watch full episodes online because the websites only allow you to access the episodes if you are using the internet within the United States! A horrifying discovery! The world wide web is truly not world wide if you limit certain parts of it from being accessed from different parts of the world!

Although our costumes were limited to what we had in the closet, I think our natural attributes made us a pretty good Lucy and Ricky! We had a lot of fun at the party. We brought our neighbors along, Raina (who is from Virginia and works at the World Bank here) and her boyfriend Agusto (who is from Managua). Everyone got along really well. There was a great mix of gringo and Nicaraguan teachers there, with lots of good food and good costumes: a bat, a German tourist, Tiger Woods, a tiger, a Muslim, a pirate and his booty, among others.

We made tentative plans with Raina, Agusto, Sabine and Matt to go to Laguna de Apoyo for the day and pack a picnic and some beers. We also are thinking of planning a weekly game night. I think that would be a great way for us all to improve our language skills. Agusto speaks a little English and Sabine and I both need to improve our Spanish. Raina and Matt are both fluent in Spanish and Ivan is fluent in English. So it is a good mix of language speakers at different levels!

Rain, Mold and Mustiness!

This is the first weekend in a long time that it hasn't rained, well at least it hasn't rained yet...and so with all this rain brings mold and the unpleasant musty smell. I first noticed Ivan's shoes to be covered in mold in the closet and then one of my jackets! When we went out dancing for my birthday, I was dancing with Ivan and his shirt smelled so musty, as did mine! The only clothes that do not have that musty smell are the ones that are worn and washed on a weekly basis, like my school uniform. But when I want to find a cute shirt for going out dancing, they are are musty from sitting in the closet. It seems that eventually all the "clean" clothes in the closet will have to be washed again, but not until the dry season, which should start in a month or two.

Ivan put up a clothes line through the house because it was becoming so hard to dry out clothes on the weekend, I would be running out to the line every couple of hours to collect the clothes before the thunderstorm, and then put them back out once the sun was shining again. Since the air is so humid, it takes forever for the clothes to dry and sometimes clothes that were washed on Saturday morning would still be damp Sunday night!

It is not just the closet that is effected by the humidity...when I went to use my nice bamboo cutting board, it too had a nice layer of mold growing on it. It has become hard to keep fruit from going bad, we have to eat it right away or it will be rotten. Even food in the refrigerator goes bad quickly, I don't think that has anything to do with the humidity, but it is still annoying. Milk and even yogurt needs to be consumed with in several days of purchase. The one things that does not seem to mold is the bread, which kinda weirds me out.